Ad technology Firm Amagi Media Eyes SME Segment

Amagi Media Labs, an advertisement technology service provider, is targeting small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) segment for attracting regional advertisements on national channels. Rates for such regional advertisements will be lower than the national ad slots.

The Bangalore-based start-up received $8 million venture capital funding by N. S. Raghavan, co-founder of Infosys, developed a technology three years ago to help brands give regional advertisements on national TV channels. The company’s pre-encoded box (or cable head end) allows multi service operators (cable operator) to use the system for airing the region specific commercials.

Mr Baskar Subramanian, co-founder, Amagi, said, “We want to provide SME advertisers to be able to target any geography across India and across all genres of channels (GEC, News, Movies, Music).” The company is also chalking out plans to expand in geographies such as Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe.

“Amagi is also expanding internationally in Asia Pacific, Latin America and in Europe,” Mr Subramanian added.

With a presence in 35 cities in India currently, the company plans to enter North-East soon. “We will be covering North-East, including Guwahati, in the next three months,” he pointed out.

As of now, Amagi has tie-ups with 15 national television channels and nine MSOs currently including companies such as Siticable (ICNCL), Manthan, Digicable, and GTPL.

Apart from its other expansion plans, the company is in talks with MSOs to enter Malda, Siliguri and 24 Parganas in West Bengal. “Currently, we cover Patna, Ranchi, the entire Orissa and Kolkata, Asansol, Durgapur, Howrah in West Bengal. We will be covering Malda, Siliguri and 24 Parganas in the next three months,” Mr. Subramanian said.

Patent in Two Years The software written by Amagi in order to provide the targeted regional ad service is expected to be patented by 2014. “It is in patent-pending stage in US and India and we expect it to be granted to us in the next 24 months,” he said.